A part of the Fontainebleau forest, much more north, no pine trees, went in smoke earlier. Forests are burning near Madrid.
It may make some people feel better to think that it is an isolated, local problem, but unfortunately global warming is the main culprit and we at least need to acknowledge it.
Article explaining when pine tree forest resist well or not to fire. https://www.sudouest.fr/faits-divers/incendies/incendies-en-...
I know global warming plays a major role in this, but I still found it interesting to know why this fire seems so bad.
Still, I believe it is important to highlight the elephant in the room first.
For example to your point: "I still found it interesting to kmow why this fire seems so bad compared to [...] before", I think it is important to state: "because global warming is getting worse over time". Not because pine trees, which have been around for a long time, and have never burned so badly.
Are you sure?
Basically they had no way to fight those fires at the time, as the article explains.
They do have firebreaks, paths for trucks to go in many places [1]. I've seen many.
But you could argue they're not wide enough to actually break fire. And when I see videos of how tall and wide the flames are, I have no idea how wide they should be... It's a managed forest though, definitely looked after because economics interests (wood, tourism).
[1] https://cnes.fr/geoimage/aquitaine-littoral-landais-massif-f...
Up to 40km, depending on the wind. Embers can travel a long way.
Either way, firebreaks and green firebreaks seem like they could be a reasonable mitigation approach, whatever the overall causes.
Does anyone here know whether the Landes forest has good firebreaks? If not, does anyone here know why? I failed to find anything about it online.
The forest is a giant tinderbox.
It so happens that the current fire near Bordeaux is roughy in the same area as the historic fire of 1949 in which 82 people died (and currently still smaller, hopefully it will stay that way) [1], as someone else already mentioned.
Wildfires in Fontainebleau are not new, either, even if this year's one it is historically large. First laws against fires in the in forest and obligation of inhabitants to help in case of fire date from the 14th century [2].
Yes warming trends do not help and increase risk (hence need to invest in equipment and prevention) but there is also fabricated drama and lack of perspective, which are unfortunately how everything is reported nowadays.
[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incendie_de_1949_dans_la_for%C...
[2] https://www.fontainebleau-photo.fr/2013/08/les-incendies-de-...
Even the criminal ones are only enabled because of the dry vegetation, caused by the recent heat waves. IMO focusing on what caused the spark is missing the root cause: global warming.
And yes you can argue that such fires existed previously, but what's concerning is that the frequency on which they are happening is increasing rapidly
[0]https://observatoire.foret.gouv.fr/themes/les-causes-des-inc...
That's why I am suggesting to keep a cool head and to take a step back to analyse things rationally. In any case that is good advice to adapt to warming, too. If you go down the rabbit hole of media reporting you are going to have a nervous breakdown.
[1] https://observatoire.foret.gouv.fr/themes/l-historique-des-f...
Understatement of the year, here, after the third heatwave of the year with a fourth on the way and record after record being shattered.
>(hence need to invest in equipment)
Easy.
>fabricated drama and lack of perspective
The one with a lack of perspective is not the ones you think.
Many of those pine forests are relatively new. Pine trees burn frequently, around every 20-30 years. In the past they used to be mixed with many other original trees, but during the recent century reforestation, pines were planted as the single tree species, making fires more prone to happen and more easily to spread.
In the past, way more population lived next to the forests, where lumber used to be part of their income, so trees were frequently cut, forests maintained and shepherds would bring their sheep to feed from forest lower plants. All of that is gone.
In the past, locals used to be able to build firewalls, clean forests and fight fire with fire (provoking small controlled wildfires to stop the big ones). Green policies forbid those actions nowadays.
Also, if we talk about past centuries, temperatures used to be higher during early middle age and before. These high temperatures are nothing new in terms of historical forest.
Also, looking at the statistics, we’re probably at the bottom number of wildfires per area in the last 70-80 years, while total forest mass has probably increased around 40-50%.
From planting to cutting is only around 30-50 years. With multiple thinnings in between. Also none of that forest existed 200 years ago and there never was anything other than pine planted there for those 200 years, in the beginning for resin, now for pulp.
And so none of it burned in the middle ages or was affected by any higher temperatures because it didn't exist back then.
"You’re both right. However OPs post is more useful than yours.
By now, everyone knows about climate change. But I assume most didn’t know the fact about the pine trees in this area.
Nowadays it’s much more about how we deal with climate change and not so much about the fact that there is human made climate change"
Thank you for proving that there are, in fact, still climate change deniers even here on hacker news.
I'm assuming you're a climate change denier. You don't say so outright, but "Green policies forbid those actions nowadays" is a bit of a dogwhistle that you oppose environmental protection regulations broadly (not merely overzealous ones that have side-effects that make combating certain types of wildfires harder in certain situations), and:
"Also, if we talk about past centuries, temperatures used to be higher during early middle age and before. These high temperatures are nothing new in terms of historical forest.
Also, looking at the statistics, we’re probably at the bottom number of wildfires per area in the last 70-80 years, while total forest mass has probably increased around 40-50%."
Well... that's pretty close to just coming out and saying you don't believe in climate science.
This truly is the least intelligent timeline.
This was the hottest year on record. 10 of the last 15 years have been the hottest year on record, consecutively. What makes you believe this fake information about the middle ages?
There have been 4 or 5 pretty massive wildfires in France that I can remember in the last 5 years, but this is the first time they've had to deal with pyrocumulonimbus caused by a wildfire. Global warming was likely a contributing factor for all of those fires, but global warming alone doesn't explain why this one is different. The first comment about the pine isn't answering "why is this happening now?", it answers the question, "why is this fire so much worse?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1949_Landes_forest_fire
Did you check for forest fires in the past?
However OPs post is more useful than yours.
By now, everyone knows about climate change. But I assume most didn’t know the fact about the pine trees in this area.
Nowadays it’s much more about how we deal with climate change and not so much about the fact that there is human made climate change.
Yes, pine is flammable. So what? Should we replace it with wood that doesn't burn? And grows on already very dry soil? Because what the "informative" OP hasn't told you is that pine growsso much there because other woods don't do as well.
Not true, I have seen people deny it on HN recently.
And looking at other debates, yes it is necessary to reiterate the primary cause. Because centrists will absolutely use the lack of that reiteration to do the "well actually it is the pine trees" in two days.
The most important thing is knowing what can be done in the short to medium term locally to improve the situation. If you tell the people living near those forests they need to fix global warming, you're not going anywhere. Can they monitor the forest beds better, do some preventive measures to limit the propagation of fires when they happen? Probably!
Unless you're on a major international forum or you have proper global reach and are a trendsetter, complaining about the obvious global warming isn't going to do much. And even if it's not obvious to some other people, you're not going to change their mind anyway on a HN discussion.
Ask yourself: when was the last time vigorous repetition of a position has convinced you personally?
You will convince them by showing them how to do it properly. Show them the way and they might follow.
[0]: https://youtu.be/eRoU3whzX_Q?t=450
ETA: clarification
We should really go way deeper than just blaming everything on an increase of temperatures, which nevertheless is actually happening.
We, locals, have been warning already for decades of the increase of fires due to an accumulation of reasons, which I have actually described already in another message down below but I can summarize here.
* Forest mass has actually increased a lot during the last decades, Spain has now around 50% more forest mass than in the 1970s.
* Part of the increased mass has to do with reforestation efforts done by governments happening since last half of last century, which basically planted many forests using pine varieties which grow very quickly but also burn quickly (Pines are biologically design to burn with their flammable design and dried needles, that's their feature).
* Historical local forest were composed of many varieties of trees, including oaks, holm oaks, poplar, which grow slowly, are way less prone to burn, and regrow again after a fire. Those varieties were never used in any reforestation efforts, which has resulted in many new forests being extremely prone to burn quickly
* Population has shifted enormously towards big cities, abandoning little villages where forests were part of their style of life. Lumber was part of their economical income, which resulted in continuous care of those forests and efforts in preservation. There are still some communities like that in some areas of Spain, and their forests have the lowest rate of wildfires in the whole country.
* Many techniques like firebreaks, counter-fires, low intensity burning to clear crop stubble, dry brush, and old vegetation to regenerate fresh grass for livestock and prepare fields are now forbidden, again increasing the risk and extension of wildfires
* Forest Grazing is also nowadays completely forbidden. Sheep used to roam everywhere in the country, consuming many burning-prone vegetation, reducing also the risk of wildfires.
But even despite all of that, countries like Spain for example, have nowadays the lowest proportion of burnt forest since the last 50 years.
I don't think it's blaming on global warming. Global warming is just making those problems a lot worse.
It is just the beginning, on average it will get worse every year. Every kilogram of CO2 we emit makes it worse, so it won't stop worsening until we reach zero emissions.
> a sensation that there's nothing we can do.
On the contrary, I think there too much we must do because of global warming. There is so much that we certainly won't be able to do it all, meaning that the situation will get "more complicated" anyway. The more we do, the more we preserve.
To make a comparison that stays in the theme: saying "we won't stop it so there is nothing we can do" is like saying "this burning tree is dead anyway, so there is no need to save the rest of the forest". The tree is dead, it won't come back. And we know for sure that many other trees will die. But we should fight to preserve as much as we can from the forest. The less we do, the more we lose. But we will lose a lot anyway, maybe just not everything (depending on how well we fight).
While I think this is mostly correct, I don't think it's OK to downplay climate change as just a "blame target". These current and extreme wildfires result from hotter and drier conditions, too. That is a major reason. And yes, we can do something about it.
Also, I know that controlled burns, grazing and firebreaks are widely used today in Spain, they are not universally forbidden.
In Wales and Ireland we have the opposite problem, the sheep strip everything bare, the old trees die and the forests cannot regenerate.
However, Fontainebleau forest has many pine trees.
In fact there is an invasive caterpillar there that lives in pine trees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_processionary
The caterpillars are also a consequence of warming.
I get where you're coming from but I don't think this is helpful.
Everyone with any sense knows global warming will cause heatwaves and they increase the risk of fires, but nobody in France can do anything about it. Even if everyone in France would do everything they can to stop global warming starting tomorrow, it would change nothing. It wouldn't help even if they got all of the EU on board.
What the people of France can do is demand more resources for fire protection, build air conditioned locations for the poor and elderly, plant trees for shade and so on.
This can be done immediately and will actually help. It also engages everyone, even a climate denier can get onboard with fighting fires and having shelter for heat.
If we stop at "it's the global warming", the response is either apathy or policies. We should prioritize things that will help right now.
Small correction, but Fontainebleau is a fairly mixed forest including 20-30% pine.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incendies_en_for%C3%AAt_de_Fon...
Notice how the last was worse by one or two orders of magnitude.
You can handwave all you want the this and the southwest forests are particularly flammable, but what you are pointing out are only "canaries in the coal mines": they are the first to burn, but other forests will follow suit if global warming continues.
A bit of a distinction without a difference. The climate is not changing back, it's the new normal. In that climate, this particular kind of agriculture (huge pine monocultures) has become a problem.
It breaks my heart to say this, I've spent nearly all my childhood summers in my family's summer house down there. This year, I left just a few days before the evacuation order would have come.
It's going to be burning every year now and if we want to be safe there, the forest can't stay the same.
Climate won't get any "new normal" until we reach strictly zero emission.
As long as we emit CO2, climate will get worse. There is no new normal: every year it will get worse.
It doesn't invalidate your point though, that it cannot stay the same and we have to do something. I'm just nitpicking on the "new normal". There won't be a new normal until we stop emitting CO2, it will just get worse and worse.
Now it will happen more and more every year, there is no stopping that trend.
In fact, in the most historically prone areas, the Mediterranean part of France, number of fires and surface area burnt have tended to decrease over time since the 1970s [1], which shows that being prepared works and this experience must now be used in more areas of the country.
[1] https://observatoire.foret.gouv.fr/themes/l-historique-des-f...
And on top of that it’s El Niño.
Edit: Before anyone misconstrues what I'm saying: no, I'm not denying global warming. I'm just saying this is why this summer in particular was always likely to be a hot one in Europe.
And going forwards the sulphur thing has most likely caused a step change from temperatures in Europe before Covid, despite underlying warming continuing at the same rate
We used to thin the trees and clear the underbrush, which drastically reduces flammability and the ability for forest fires to rapidly spread.
But that's not seen as "environmentally friendly" these days.
The problem (as always) is that it is complicated.
We are living in a mass extinction right now (orders of magnitudes faster than the one of the dinosaurs), mostly because of habitat loss. It has nothing to do with the climate (of course the climate is making it worse, but we screwed the biodiversity before that).
Is thinning the trees and clearing the underbrush good for the biodiversity? Probably not. Is it good to reduce flammability? Probably yes.
But I don't think it is fair to say that those who care about biodiversity are obviously wrong because preserving the biodiversity make forest more flammable. If you think like this, the solution is to go live in a bunker. Many people find that attractive (just look at how many dream about living in a bunker on mars), but I don't.
Growth-driven ecological harm isn’t unique to capitalism.
To manage forrests and and other agriculture in the traditional way, we need extreme amounts of extreme poverty. We need millions and millions of people who are happy to spend 14 hours per day collecting sticks and tending sheep in the woods, in exchange for nothing more than a bowl of porridge. And they need to this every day all their lives.
We don't have that kind of poverty since capitalism took over from feudalism.
There are other ways than capitalism to build wealth in a society, but to the degree that they work and actually reduce poverty, they will have the same outcome.
There would also be no property taxes, but on the other hand there would also be no tax funded services like healthcare or education.
Like, there are motor saws nowadays.
Probably a dozen reasons why we cannot that I am unaware of, but from my arm chair it looks good.
In Europe, we've lost 80% of insects in the last 20 years, something like that? That was completely unrelated to climate change. I guess climate change is just coming to help with the remaining 20%.
> Some efforts have begun to diversify the Landes forest and to maintain or promote deciduous trees, particularly along the edges of plots. The major difficulty, according to foresters, is that very few species are able to grow in this region, where the sandy soil is very poor and very acidic (it is one of the poorest soils in Europe). Foresters describe the maritime pine as a "miracle species" in this regard.
> While other species can still grow, it is much more slowly and with greater difficulty. Radically transforming this vast forest, currently 80% dominated by maritime pines, therefore seems complicated, and there is also a significant economic stake involved in timber production in the region.
The Landes Forest which is currently burning is really interesting in that you have all 4 of the major European disturbance types there: Human clear cuts, storm damage, large scale insect infestation and fire.
Most other forested areas in Europe only have two or three of these. For example most of the Mediterranean does not have meaningful amount of storm damage.
Just shows how badly suited the Landes Forest with its current forest management is in todays climate.
So basically entire tree stands have to die or crowns have to lose their leafs for it to be detectable form space.
Main insect of concern are bark beetles (ips typographus for spruce, ips sexendtatus for pines) which disrupt the cambium causing a gradual vitality decline until you have dead standing trees. In satellite imagery this is visible as irregular brownish-red patches.
On the other hand there's gypsy moths (also known as spongy moth, Lymantria dispar) which affect the leafs directly, causing large scale temporary defoliation in broadleafed trees usually in the middle of summer.
There's hundreds more insects but few have the capability to cause large scale die-off in trees which are grown in monoculture (pine/spruce/beech).
From what I saw online, there are indications that firebreaks do not always work, for instance when embers fly over long distances, carried by the wind, over firebreaks, and start fires on the other side. But I would guess that firebreaks like cleared areas, for instance between settlements and forests, should be able to mitigate at least some of the fires.
Here in Sweden we had a large fire that jumped a lake.
An open case is more in terms of temperate forests which are increasingly starting to burn, for example in Austria or other central European countries. These tend to be understory fires, which (for now) only rarely catch the crown.
For these fires the tree crown stays green and you can't see any change until later in the year or the next year, where the trees die due to damage the fire did to their cambium and roots. Correctly attributing this later decline to fire damage is a bit challenging.
The whole damned thing was planted in the 1850s as an enormous pine plantation.
Same thing as drives wildfires in Portugal - maritime pine (and in Portugal’s case eucalyptus). Vast, dense, barely managed pyrophytic monocultures. The problem isn’t poorly managed forest, it’s the forest, period - it shouldn’t be there.
Where native forest (oak, chestnut, hazel, etc) remains, we don't have major fires. They are finally experimenting with planting firebreaks of native species in some areas, which has been quite effective at halting the spread of fires. But realistically, we need a huge government investment to get rid of this monoculture entirely.
With how natural forest disturbances are more and more starting to affect the plantation, it proves to be seen what the response will be.
The thing is that it is an incredibly productive forest (only in terms of biomass). So now there's a bunch of capital riding on it which will have a vested interest to keep it productive.
In this particular instance, everybody in this thread seems to be forgetting the region where the fires are currently raging used to be very unsanitary swamps before the pine forests were planted. These older wetlands were a major source of disease and misery for the local population. The reason why they only planted pines were because the soil there is poor & acidic. Nothing else grows really. Now of course, this needs to be rethought in the light of climate change, but it wasn't a stupid idea at the time.
[1] The unlikely triumph of Napoleon III, https://engelsbergideas.com/reviews/the-unlikely-triumph-of-...
[2] Napoleon III and the Second Empire, https://www.routledge.com/Napoleon-III-and-the-Second-Empire...
[3] The People's Emperor, https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571361304-the-peoples-em...
see https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/train-cab-wildfir...
[edit] other video links in case the first link isn't viewable outside Canada.
see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwc16INKNq0 or https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qAerRqQQHAM
Now I am wondering if my return flight from Bordeaux in a few days will actually happen. Currently the airport is still operating, although the surrounding area has been evacuated. It really looks apocalyptic there, though:
https://static.actu.fr/uploads/2026/07/aeroport-bordeaux-fum...
Good luck, and stay safe.
More layers -> PM2.5 is very telling.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumulonimbus_flammagenitus
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flammagenitus_cloud
[3]: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/climate-lab/little...
Technical details in the video link start around 3:34 for those interested
Excuse the French for the non Francophones but trying to be detailed and exacting here on why this isn’t bad journalism to use that term
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/climate-lab/little...
I'm worried that geoengineering will upset the balance of things even more, a temporary and short-term solution for incidents.
Say they start sulfur injection or whatever, and a year later there are crop failures in India. While it could have happened anyway, there is now a plausible chance that it can be pinned on who ever did the geoengineering. The amount of scapegoating on any climate issue would be wild.
What we do need now is finally the determination to fight climate change. We have all the tools at our disposal to eliminate any fossil fuel burning within some years. We should finally take this as the priority it should be.
Wonder how much 2020 Bunker Fuel ban contributed.
Greta Thunberg announces she has gone 'net-zero' on swearing after 'f-bomb' furore - https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/greta-t...
This also addresses the tree death issue.
Pyrophilic species can even benefit from forest fires with reproduction being triggered by them.
It would also be quite unusual for accountant teams to follow individual trees around throughout their lifecycle, ticking little boxes when they die or something, in order to follow through on carbon credits. Think about this realistically.
There's no guarantee that a tree planted to "offset" a flight will grow to any kind of maturity, let alone survive three months. Some saplings just die.
Or maybe that tree got planted in a tree plantation for timber, or wood pulp, and 20 years later, it's framing timber or newsprint.
(I am someone who does revegetation projects and have planted a large number of trees)
https://xn--incendiosespaa-2nb.es/ (in Spanish)
It is disheartening to see how everything is basically in red.
240,000 acres is about 97,000 hectares. By July 26, Spain had already lost more than 150,000 hectares, or around 371,000 acres, six times the area burned by the same point last year...
You need to quantify in sq km or some other objective unit what makes this so unique.
Regarding eucalyptus burning: a lot of them burned suddenly after a policy change allowing land to be repurposed after wildfires, I've just been told by locals.
No one here is really discussing “climate change”.
Is it denial, or just that we’ve accepted the obvious?
Even climate change denial has moved from denying the fact to denying that we can fix anything, for either economic or technical reasons.
The governance crisis: how can we follow science on so many things, how can countries completely change on short order, but not for this...
A few years ago EU voted to define two technologies as green. One was natural gas, and the other was nuclear. Which parties voted for natural gas, and which parties voted for nuclear?
There is a EU decision to phase out ICE in cars. A good continuation would be to issue a similar decision to phase out ICE in the energy grid. It would be nice if both sides could just join together on such decision.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Hearing_of_James_E._Han...
Hansen is still going and has been ringing the alarm that we have deeply under estimated the relative carbon loading and heating potential on emissions. There is a real fear that we have locked in a lot more warming potential than the models have been predicting via several factors. Namely carbon warms slightly more than anticipated, more methane releases, great water vapor levels as a result of the previous two and reduced reflective materials decreasing our relative albedo.
Problems have solutions, predicaments have responses. We are in a predicament, and the quicker and more direct we can respond the better chance we have to adverting the more nasty paths of the future.
1. It isn't happening.
2. It is happening but we aren't doing it.
3. It is happening and we are doing it but it won't be as bad as we think.
4. It is happening but it is too late to do anything.
5. Acceptance.
The wild card 6th step was 'Jewish Space lasers' or 'Jewish weather control'. It is always the Jewish people who get the rough end of the stick. It was something I wasn't anticipating coming up but here we are, hitting new lows.
This isn’t a “it’s summer, and fires burn” type of a deal. Even though most fires are set by idiots on purpose, it spreads so well because everywhere is dry. Most parcs and fields look like savannas instead of the usual green.
Climate is changing drastically, exactly as predicted.
But that's not really the point being debated. Nobody is claiming climate change invented wildfires. But it is making the conditions for extreme fires more common. The IPCC concludes with high confidence that fire hazard conditions, including heatwaves and fire weather, have increased across Europe since 1980, particularly in southern and western Europe, even though ignition sources and land management still matter.
Climate change is increasing the odds that fires become larger and harder to control.
Western Europe has also experienced increasingly frequent and severe droughts in recent years. Those prolonged dry conditions leave forests and vegetation far more combustible, making fires spread faster and burn more intensely once they start.
I don't think it will be grim forever, this isn't "DOOOOMED, WE ARE ALL DOOMED!" but I am not holding out for the Frutiger Aero future of only a few decades back.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Benz
begging governments to solve the problem has obviously failed; focusing our efforts on fostering ideas and inventions is our best hope at getting our of this mess.
Given the dominance of state level actors in fossil fuel extraction (a role they did not have in horse based transport), to deny states have a role in decarbonizing energy seems naive. I don’t see what’s unreasonable to suggest that the current massive resources states put into supporting fossil fuel consumption and spending on wars to protect its production and distribution be redirected towards accelerating the adoption of modern clean energy production and use.
Build…
More…
Datacenters…
But seriously, hacker news routinely denies the obvious when it comes to climate crisis.
There was already an issue but it has just been amplified.
Fascinating, we’ve got sentient clouds before sentient AI
"Witness to Disaster | National Geographic" - https://youtu.be/clTeqIpGBeU
Thank you for your service everyone, these are real life heroes like the ones you see on Star Wars movies but real.
https://incendieencours.fr/en/incendies says 17 ongoing and 92 recent in France. I can't promise they count the same way, but… the motive's also substantially different:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgxv8n7wd0o
> Most fires here are illegally started by humans, according to scientists, the Federal Police, and the government: loggers and miners looking to exploit land in the Amazon, or farmers turning it into pasture.
But then, it's real that Bolsonaro was criminally negligent on fire-avoidance. What we will discover next year is how much of it could be avoided at all.
Never let them live this down
Picture from the french "moderate" right journal Le Figaro, mai 2026.
"investigation into environmental alarmists"
https://sk.sagepub.com/ency/edvol/globalwarming2ed/chpt/bush...
Bush II dismantled NASA's mission statement to monitor the world, for example. This is not a new foe, and I have not forgotten. https://www.ucs.org/resources/nasa-earth-removed-mission-sta...
I mean ultimately it is everyone who ever bought an electronic product or drove an automobile or ate a burger right?... At some level. But it just seems like this level of anger should be directed at the actually decision makers and their lackeys... or are u claiming that there is some sort of functioning democracy that holds power accountable, because most of the electorate like wars and bombing and usury and these things too? If you must be angry, and not saying you shouldn't be, please focus it on the correct source and not other powerless people, misinformed as they may be.
Real examples, I dont live in the west, I don't vote, I don't give any money to corpos, not firsthand, I am typing on an ancient probably third hand device and other than utilities it's negligible. I try to be as self sufficient as possible and create as less waste as I can ...this is not futilist...these are small things that make a difference at scale. But ultimately once the next round of guillotines has run its course, which is unenviable and inevitable at this point. We need to find a way to educate ourselves and balance our desires...which will be very hard yes. Not fultile.
Or you mean "big corpos"? Why does the size matter?
Or do you mean that those are unethical corporations?
So let's focus on preventing them from doing unethical things them.
In any case, we are living in society, so it is better to cooperate, and to no add but multiply our competences in order to create the future's solutions.
Living "by ourselves", all 8 billions of us, is the recipe for flash-burning through all of the planet's resources.
All of us just using wood for energy is just stupid and short-lived. Our "ancestors" lived on a much different planet and were much less many.
But let's not fall into the trap of hoping that violence can rescue us. That's the opposite of a solution. All the most devoid of ideas and of creativity, the most bloodthirsty, will win, and those are the least capable of well managing the planet in the future. (We are looking for how to prevent corporations to do unethical things, so we cannot at the same time call for guillotines.)
I'm not knocking capital and it's use in development I'm knocking usury, the immoral use of capital for things that don't take into account personal responsibility.
And violence is not maybe the best way, I don't practice or preach it, but its way we have chosen for the entirety of our past and it's probably the most "natural" way, thus I would argue inevitable. And ya no doubt it will suck for most of the planet, but the planet isn't going anywhere after all..just you and me, and I'm fine with that honestly.
And of course fighting against the idiotic far-right propaganda, largely responsible for the climate inaction.
Which by the way in the US has recently passed the stage of "inaction" to enter the realm of actively destroying the planet.
Options like VR glasses?
Or even a full VR suit?
Personally I cannot put up with living in a city, but humans can adopt to surprising conditions of living.
But I am very much with you on the abundance mindset as the actual solution. Better tech, more of it.
This is where "people watching Fox News" are guilty here, they got the wrong information and thus are really not able to decide to "eat less meat" or "avoid ICE vehicles".
So Fox News is a real culprit. But let's not forget that many different news channels exist, with an infinitely better coverage of AGW.
So I actually think it is perfectly OK to blame people for watching Fox News.
We need big funding and legal maneuvers to actually fix the problem. That or praying very hard that renewables are so good they can free-market fix everything without any additional pushes.
And this is not an earthquake, it happens every years at the same time.
It is too easy to blame climate change.
And climate change is making them worse.
But don't worry, it's not just about fires. The same can be said about pretty much everything they've done.
Specifically, eating out may even save energy. Arguing on HN consumes very little of it. Same with watching football on tv
(/s, it's a joke, like this one: https://i.imgur.com/CMsAp8v.png )
Unfortunately for us, the Earth has no preferences and doesn't run on our schedule.
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F3...
Just a few more GPUs ought to fix it.
It thinks for a few days, cross comparing everything in written history and then comes back with only a single sentence.
"Love the Earth and life like you love yourselves."
Then it goes quiet not answering anything else.
I can't recall his name but I think he had a mustache.
> “What is happening right now is extremely, extremely unusual. Seeing a cloud this massive and reaching such an altitude above a wildfire is exceptionally rare,” the researcher explains.
“During the Pedrógão fire [which claimed around 60 lives in Portugal in 2017], there were two episodes of fire-induced thunderstorms. Here, we are already at eight or ten, and the forecast is not encouraging at all.”
Although unprecedented in both intensity and frequency, the phenomenon has been observed in France before, according to the expert: during the Fontainebleau wildfire (Seine-et-Marne) in July, the Ribaute fire (Aude) in 2025, and the Générac fire (Gard) in 2019.
It seems that this cloud and the attached storms have been seen before, even recently, in France, but this one is one of a kind for intensity, by far.
[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2026/07/27/le-pyrocum...